


Three for Roy-Boy

by Sayarling



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: Afterlife!Royai, F/M, Marriage, Old!Royai, Romance, Sexual Content, Young!Royai
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-26
Updated: 2021-01-26
Packaged: 2021-03-12 07:46:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29007024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sayarling/pseuds/Sayarling
Summary: Whether near or far, I am always yours.Or, a life well-lived.
Relationships: Riza Hawkeye/Roy Mustang
Comments: 26
Kudos: 60





	Three for Roy-Boy

**Author's Note:**

> Spiciness warning for the beginning paragraphs :)

**_One_ **

“I love you,” he admits. “I love being in love with you.”

Nothing is as sweet as her fingers carding through his hair, her heart thumping under his ear in a steady rhythm. It’s a loaded thing to say while he lies heavy on top of her, still inside her, the two of them dozing in a warm and musky afterglow. Her hands drift lower, stroking up and down his back where the sweat has cooled. The sensation of her fingertips dancing across his skin is so sinfully good.

“Is that so?” she murmurs, and through his lashes, he can just glimpse the serene wash of a smile across her face. Her cheeks are still pink but it’s fading a little with every passing minute, giving way to a bright, warm glow, not unlike the rising sun pushing through the slats in her blinds.

“Mmhmm,” he hums and readjusts his head so that his nose is pressed tightly into her neck. He places fluttering kisses there, soft lips on soft skin. Her hands, too, find a new home; one pressed to his nape, the other settled low on his back.

He asks her what she wants. Who she wants to be.

“I want - so much,” she says softly, near a whimper when his lips find her pulse point, his tongue laving it. She hasn’t gotten used to this feeling, of being loved. (Of being touched.) She hopes the sensation of him never loses its thrill.

“Tell me,” he whispers into her neck.

“You,” she admits. “A life together. A family. A little house in the woods--”

He swallows her words, surging over her and kissing her hard. Her knees slide up to bracket him and he rocks up into her. She moans into his kisses, trembling under the roll of his abdomen. Canting her hips up to meet him, they move together, their pants and whines filling her small bedroom. She cries out that she loves him.

Her wail sends him spiraling, and then he’s kissing her again, utterly consumed and spellbound by her very being. He brushes away the tears that trickle down her cheeks but doesn’t try to stop them. He knows she needs this.

“I don’t want you to go,” she whispers. Her voice trembles; he feels the disjointed vibrations when he kisses her throat. Pulling away, he strokes her jaw as he looks down at her.

“Neither do I,” he says. “But I’ll be back before you know it. I promise.”

The neighbors let her borrow their truck to take him to the train station. They’re both scrubbed clean; he is outfitted in his crisp dress blues and she is in her best frock and a thick wool coat to stave off the morning chill. She is quiet as they wait for the train to arrive to take him back to the academy, but he notices she wrings her hands from time to time. He thinks of her going back to that old, empty house by herself and feels his throat tighten. The manor is just as silent and unwelcoming as it ever was when Berthold Hawkeye was alive, but somehow the thought of her toiling away without even her father’s spectral presence makes Roy feel sick and lonely on her behalf.

The train whistle heralds its arrival at last and they stand, face each other, and embrace quickly. One last moment of comfort is all he can give her now.

Or is it? He thinks as he pulls back, only to grasp her hands in his.

He wants to give her the entire world. He stares too long - he knows by how she’s looking at him with a puzzled expression. All at once, the idea comes to him, and with a gulp and a prayer, Roy yanks his hat off of his head.

“I want to give you a house in the woods,” he exclaims. “I want you to have an automobile of your own, and a garden. I want to give you a baby. As many as you want.”

His face feels impossibly red, and he’s shaking a bit, but there’s no going back now. Riza’s eyes dart back and forth, subtly fearful that some disapproving bystander will tutt at them for the racket. No one pays them any mind.

“Roy,” she hastens him. “What are you saying?”

“Marry me,” he insists and drops to his knees in front of her. He tugs on her hands and she stumbles closer to him. His arms wrap around her waist and he buries his head in her stomach.

“Please, Riza. Wait for me. Wait for me and marry me and be my wife.”

“Fool,” she chokes out, but there’s no malice or scolding in it. She tips his head back and she is beaming at him. “I will. Of course, I will.”

Roy’s whoops and hollers as he stands to kiss her are drowned out by the warning whistle of the train. She’s laughing too, as she kisses him back and he lifts her off her feet.

“Your train!” she cries. The wheels are starting to creek forward, just an inch. Roy crushes one last kiss to her mouth, stuffs his hat onto his head and darts with his briefcase toward the open compartment door where a cross crew member scowls at them. He cups his hands over his mouth.

“I love you, Riza!” he shouts over the whistle again, leaning out the door.

“I love you, too!” she yells back. “Be safe!”

She waves to him until he’s out of sight and clutches at the card he had given her the week prior at her father’s graveside. It burned her fingers in her coat pocket, but now it’s cold as ice and weighs heavy in her grasp.

She thinks about Roy saving the world, and decides then and there that she wants to do it with him.

* * *

_**Interlude** _

It goes like this: wars pass between them.

The world is not for them, Riza realizes, and she watches his back over the years with that mantra in her head. She follows him into hell and back. They are pushed together and ripped apart. They stare death in the face. All this time, she loves him still.

The things she’d wanted as a girl - the house, the garden, the babies (their babies) - are not attainable anymore, she tells herself. And it is what it is. Her life has been devoted to a higher calling. And while sometimes she questions if it was all really worth it, if she would do it all over again if she could, she doesn’t think she could bring herself to change. She can’t picture anyone else by Roy’s side, protecting him, but her.

If her calling was to save a life, she thinks she’s content with his being the one.

She thinks that, until she dreams of Ishval and wakes with screams stuck in her throat, and feels so small and useless. Feels the weight of her sins on her shoulders despite her best efforts to earn redemption, to replace what the Ishvallans lost, to be worthy of atonement. To be good.

All this time and it’s still not good enough to ease her burdened heart. When she thinks of domesticity (the house, the garden, the babies, theirs), she’s sure she doesn’t deserve any of it. Not after everything.

Still, the battle is won. The world is safe because of them. So she goes to bed with him, and for all their caution it’s so easy for recklessness to take over when they’re consumed by each other. She wonders if he still remembers the way he’d dropped to his knees in front of her that day on the train station. She wonders if he knows it was the happiest day of her life.

* * *

_**Two** _

The thing about being a Fuhrer-President hopeful is he’s in more danger than ever. She’s been sprouting stray gray hairs for nearly a decade, but now that he’s announced his intent to run for office she thinks she might have to start getting her hair colored to keep up with it.

He isn’t even elected yet and she’s overwhelmed by the roundabout protection that he needs. She’d been coordinating his campaign and his still-existing military responsibilities all while helping him hire a security detail with enough personnel that someone can be with him all the time. Now, they’ve got a solid group of soldiers joining their little chosen family. They’re a godsend, but Riza has stopped lying to herself a long time ago. Despite their capability, the only one she really trusts is herself.

“I have an idea,” he says to her one evening. They’re sitting opposite each other in his home office with a steaming cup of tea each.

“What’s that?” she asks absently. Her focus is still on a thick proposal in her lap where she’s making annotations. “You’re not going to like it,” he warns, and she nods, her eyes still glued to the page. Roy clears his throat of a persistent cough, an annoyance that’s hung on long enough that she doesn’t even badger him to get it checked out anymore.

“I think you should retire.”

That gets her attention.

So well, in fact, that the proposal slides off her legs and lands with a loud thunk on the floor. She’s so shocked at his suggestion that she doesn’t have the wherewithal to answer him with words; she gapes at him with wide eyes.

“Hear me out,” he says, holding his hands in front of his chest in a placating motion while Riza folds her arms over her chest. “Retire from the military and let the guys handle that work. You know they could run the show without you if they had to.”

She’s still stunned into silence, and Roy finds it leagues more ominous than to have her screaming at him. So he continues.

“Instead, head up my security detail. Be my personal bodyguard. Coordinate everything personally, full-time. You said yourself it’s your top priority.”

“It is!” she asserts, finding her voice.

“So why not make it official?”

She has to admit, it’s not a bad idea. Breda, Havoc, Fuery, and their new team members have been functioning autonomously for months, a well-oiled machine honed under her leadership and their flawless execution. Without Roy’s military responsibilities to think about, she could certainly handle his security and continue to assist with the campaign.

Roy rises from his side of the desk and comes to kneel in front of her. He moves the forgotten proposal out of the way and covers her hands with his.

“I haven’t forgotten,” he says softly, and the room grows so quiet they can hear the passing chatter on the street, stories below.

“Sir,” she breathes. He reaches up to cup her cheek.

“Do you still want - the things I said I’d give you?” he asks, and his voice is close to desperate.

And even though she still believes she doesn’t deserve those things, she can’t say no - because she hears the underlying question: _Do you still want me?_

And yes, oh yes, she does. More than anything, still. She wants him for the rest of their lives.

“I do,” she chokes.

“Then let me,” he begs. She grasps his face in her hands and kisses him so hard he nearly tips over. ‘Yes’ is on her lips and she says it over and over again until her lips are swollen with promises.

It’s not a little house in the woods, but it doesn’t matter; never did, really. She wanted a life together - and he can give her that now. And a few months later, when he wakes in time to find her vomiting into the toilet, she wonders what the conditions of her new bodyguard position say about maternity leave.

* * *

_**Interlude** _

It goes like this: Anna Mustang grows up in the Fuhrer’s mansion.

Mama trains Black Hayate to follow her everywhere she goes, and she feels lucky to have a best friend that can be with her all the time, especially when Mama and Daddy are working. They do big important stuff, but they and Grandpa Grumman are always nearby. Uncle Ed and Aunt Win come to visit a lot with the cousins, and those are her very favorite days.

Daddy’s speeches are boring and long. She knows because he makes her sit in front of him while he practices and Mama perches at his desk and takes notes. She brings her stuffed animals into Daddy’s study sometimes to make it seem like he’s talking to a lot of people. Daddy always does better on the podium than he does while he practices, which tells Anna that her stuffed animals are working, even though Daddy says that it’s just because he gets nervous talking in front of Mama about important things. He calls her “a distraction”, and she thought that wasn’t a good thing to be, but Daddy smiles when he says it so it can’t be all bad.

Anna likes the writing part. The stuff Daddy writes ends up in the paper or the radio sometimes, and Mama says that someday her stories can reach people too if she practices lots and minds her teachers. Her stories wouldn’t be so dull, she thinks. Daddy’s stories don’t make a lot of sense but she sees people nodding, sure and proud when they hear his voice on the radio.

Years at the mansion pass quickly and Anna goes to university. It’s the first time she’s been unsupervised in her life. Mama made it a point to shield her from the cameras and the journalists and the nosy public when she was little, but somehow everyone at school still knows who she is. She doesn't bask in the attention like her friends do when someone tries to talk to her, but it’s not the bother it used to be either. Even still, she’s disappointed that people want to know the Fuhrer’s daughter, but they don’t seem to want to know Anna as much.

Her peers fall into two camps: those who hold a distrust of government in general, no doubt from hearing a similar sentiment from their parents, and those whose opinions center fully around Mama, who is in her 50s and still a bodyguard for Daddy and well-known as the Hawk’s Eye. They are Amestresis’ favorite love story. It’s all just so romantic, her roommates exclaim. Were they still very much in love? Embarrassingly so?

She thinks so, but it occurs to her that she’d never paid much attention to it before. She thinks hard, and after a time remembers the little things - Daddy dancing with Mama in the kitchen. Daddy blushing when Mama would reach out and grab his hand after his speeches. Mama’s soothing hands on Daddy’s back when he coughed so hard that his handkerchief turned red, holding him tight.

There’s a ruby-eyed boy in her history class who doesn’t care who she is and she likes that about him. When they’re partnered on a research project together, he doesn’t ask her a thing about the Fuhrer and her bodyguard mother. He calls her Anna. Just Anna.

She flushes pink when he reaches out and grabs her hand. He pulls her to her feet and dances with her to no music in the deserted library, their books and notes forgotten. She thinks about their first kiss for hours and how sweetly he’d held her. She thinks about his eyes and how afraid she’d been to look into them, sure they’d be full of anger and distrust. For all he said he didn’t care about her parentage, she knew he knew what they’d done. But to her endless relief, there wasn't an ounce of hostility to be found of her kind Radhi.

When she returns home on break and tells Mama all about him, she shares a knowing smile. Later, when she sees her parents together as Mama counts out his medication and Daddy watches her with a little upturned smile, she realizes she knows that look too - and when her peers ask, are they still very much in love? She can confidently answer, yes.

* * *

_**Three** _

Roy slumps against the bedroom threshold and takes a moment not to act, but to simply look. All his life he’s been jumping into the heart of the action, constantly on the move - but now he’s content just to watch. Just to see. He is in his 60s and it’s time to take a break.

The nursery is mint green with a little mobile hanging from the ceiling with tiny horses dangling at staggered, alternating heights.

“Mustangs,” Anna had said with a laugh. “Get it?”

 _Clever_ , Roy thinks, _and sweet._ His Anna in a nutshell.

Across the room, Riza sits in the rocker with a little baby in her arms who does not look at all interested in sleep despite the late hour. She whispers softly to her granddaughter, her eyes and cheeks crinkling into a smile. The years have been difficult on them both, but she’s still so beautiful, with her chin-length blonde hair laced white and deep wrinkles imprinted into her skin. She looks up and beams at him.

“Would you like to hold her?” she asks, and Roy’s chuckle is as welcoming and sweet as thunder. He nods. He approaches his wife and kneels before her, still thankfully spry and agile despite his age, despite the slow betrayal of his body. She transfers the sleeping baby into his arms, a move they’ve perfected over the years of passing their daughter to one another.

He remembers bringing Anna home from the hospital and how scared they were, parents for the first time. Parents they didn’t think they’d ever get to be.

Their granddaughter's hair is wiry, black, and curly and her eyes look like little maroon jewels. They’ve named her Amani, after Radhi’s grandmother. Roy marvels that they live in a world where this is possible - where a little girl with a name meaning ‘peace’ is born with the blood of many nations running through her veins. She’ll grow up happy and loved, without the scent of blood sneering at her. It’s the world Roy strived to build, and as he looks into Amani’s round little face, he thinks that his work is complete. He looks up and Riza is staring at him with glassy eyes and a smile that makes him warm all over. She presses a delicate hand to her lips and with a wavering voice, she tells him.

“You remind me of -- you. From back then.” She swipes at her eyes.

“Sometimes, when I look at you, you look just like the boy who proposed to me on the train platform.”

He smiles wanly. “As opposed to the sick, old Fuhrer?”

“Nonsense,” she chides. “When you said you’d give me family. Give me children. I never imagined it’d be - this beautiful.”

“You deserve all the beauty this life has to offer, dear one,” he tells her.

And at that moment, he’s nineteen again, begging for her to wait for him on a train platform.

He’s twenty, dry-heaving in a makeshift shower in the middle of the Ishvalan desert and trembling so hard he can barely stand upright. 

He’s twenty-seven and sightless, anchored to reality by her hands and voice and little else.

Thirty-four and offering her the life she always deserved.

Thirty-five and thirty-seven - a father, a Fuhrer.

How is it that these years have passed him in a sprint? How is it that just a moment ago he was holding his baby in his arms for the first time, and in the blink of an eye that baby is grown with a child of her own?

“You’re still here?” a soft voice rasps from the doorway. Roy looks over his shoulder. Anna, ashen and in a terry cloth robe, runs a hand through her long, dark hair. As if on cue, Amani begins to squall, and Anna is by Roy’s side in a flash lifting her onto her shoulder.

“It’s late. Why don’t you let Radhi drive you home?” Anna asks and she rubs soothing circle’s against her daughter’s back.

“Darling, we’re here to help you,” Riza protests. “Go back to sleep. Daddy and I will soothe the baby.”

“No, no,” Anna murmurs. She dips her head to place kisses on Amani’s temple, and her cries peter off into little whimpers. “It’s okay, really. You should be sleeping in your own bed. Especially you, Daddy. We’re all set here.”

Riza helps Roy to his feet and they each embrace their daughter, kiss their granddaughter.

“I’ll call you tomorrow,” Anna says with a strained look on her face. “Let me know how everything goes.”

Anna and Radhi have a little house in the woods with their own automobile and a garden. Amani will grow up with dirt between her toes and sunlight in her hair, will hopefully never know war but from stories and history books. If she ever gets a tattoo it’ll be because she wants to, and if she learns alchemy it’ll be in pursuit of changing the world for something good.

Riza always said she didn’t deserve this happiness, but as he helps her into the car, he thinks that couldn’t be further from the truth. All he was, and all he did, was with her by his side. And he thinks that their newest challenge, for all of her optimism, might be the toughest one yet.

“We have to be at the hospital for your appointment at six tomorrow morning,” she says. “Are you nervous?”

Roy shrugs. “It’d be foolish not to be. But I have you. So what’s the worst that could happen?”

She doesn’t answer, because the worst that could happen has nearly happened before. Because the doctor said he had three months to live if they didn’t try something new. Three more months to be Fuhrer, to be a grandfather, a father, a husband. Three more months to love Riza. Anna. Amani.

He needs more. It’s been a long life, a hard life, a good life - but he needs more. He isn’t ready to go. He blushes when Riza reaches across the bench seat to lace his hand with hers.

“You’re going to beat this,” Riza says quietly. “That’s an order, sir.”

He nods, and that’s all the marching orders he needs. He squeezes her hand.

* * *

_**Interlude** _

It goes like this: Roy waits for a long time.

The days are never-ending and bright, so bright it burns his eyes. The bench is cold but he doesn’t mind the numbness while he patiently waits. He is surprised to realize he’s not in much of a hurry - not like before. Now, it seems, he has all the time in the world.

The hubbub on the train station is blurry and fast-paced, faceless people whirling by him, lackadaisical and rushing and melancholy and joyful all at once. He sees a few people he recognizes now than then. He even catches sight of Heymans Breda’s profile once but doesn’t call out for him. It doesn’t seem right. Doesn’t compel him.

Breda seems weary and slumped, and a little bewildered, but he inherently seems to know where he’s going. That sense of direction is what pulled Roy to the bench after he disembarked his train. He trusts that his old friend is headed right where he should.

He’s not sure where he’d been before he got on the train. He vaguely remembers the prick of a needle in his arm and the unpleasant sensation of a nasal cannula. He remembers a man in a mask and scrubs peering down at him, addressing him as the Fuhrer. He must have been out of it if he doesn’t remember going home. He’s been under anesthesia before, for other procedures, and even then he could still remember leaning against his wife’s shoulder as she drove him home.

Every now and then he remembers something important. Or he thinks it must be important because the spark of remembrance flits away as quickly as it arrives, but he feels warm while it’s there. In his mind’s eye, he can almost grasp a tendril of golden blonde hair, the quirk of a pretty smile. Blue, woolen fabric with brass buttons. Like the uniform he wears now, but brighter. He can almost feel that scratchy texture on his cheek.

The wail of a train in the distance startles him, and he suddenly feels very strange. Shaky, perhaps even anxious. Like the waiting might be over, now, with this train’s arrival. It seems sharper, more colorful than the others, like the perpetual haze cast over the station has lifted. His hands feel warm, too. They weren’t warm before.

The train scrapes to a halt on the platform and Roy rises from his bench, prompted by a sense of urgency that makes his heart pound. A heavy crowd is exiting the train cars and flooding the platform, a whirl of shapes, sizes, and colors. It’s been a long time since he’s felt this giddy kind of anticipation. Perhaps when he was waiting to hear of the election results. When his child was born. When his knees were shaking on a platform a lot like this one, back in the country, with a mouth and a heart faster than his brain and his greatest love smiling at him when he begged her to be his.

And - there. There she is.

She’s exactly like he remembers her, and she’s a sight for sore eyes. It’s like it was yesterday, or years ago, or a decade. But all the time in between couldn’t make him forget her, like this.

She is young again.

She’s come from a grand event. That immaculately pressed blue uniform, her formal pencil skirt, and heels, her hat. Golden blonde hair tied into a low, sleek bun. A silver wedding band on her left hand. Her cognac eyes, darting back and forth, looking for someone -- for him. And she’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

“Riza,” he calls out, and her lips part as she catches sight of him. He knows he’s smiling hard, can’t stop smiling, and his throat constricts so tightly when her face lights up.

She looks relieved and overwhelmed as she crosses the platform toward him. He darts in between passengers to get to her as if he can’t bear the thought of one more second apart from her.

She crashes into him, arms thrown over his shoulders and he lifts her by the waist. She is grasping his face and kissing him, kissing him so hard he wonders how long it really was since he started waiting for her. He squeezes and kisses her back, desperate to soak her in. His Riza. His whole life.

Her feet are touching the ground again, and she’s pressing her forehead against his. They stand amongst the passing souls, reveling in each other. Finally.

“I missed you,” she whispers shakily, and he tightens his arms around her. “Were you waiting long?”

“Not at all,” he answers. Her hands, before gripping his shoulders, have slid up to grasp his face. She stares, memorizing. “I’ve missed you quite terribly, my dear one.”

“Oh, Roy,” she croaks and buries her face in his shoulder as she embraces him. He drags comforting strokes up and down her back. He presses a kiss to her temple. Then he remembers.

“Where is Anna? Should we wait for her?”

Riza pulls back and thumbs her eyes but shakes her head.

“No, we should go ahead. Anna won’t be along for some time,” she says. He nods and finds relief at her answer.

Behind them, the train has creaked to a start again and is slowly chugging away, and with its departure, Roy can feel the heat of a rising sun on his cheeks, the tug of a warm breeze drying the tear tracks he didn’t know were there. He and Riza move at the same time into a position they’ve held a thousand times; sides pressed tightly together, her arm threaded through his, and they begin to walk.

**Author's Note:**

> SORRY :)


End file.
